USPS Responds to Virginia City Highlands Mail Issues

In a former life, we dealt with the United States Postal Service (USPS) on a daily basis with our clients who generated gobs of mail or our mailing houses clients who generated gobs and gobs of mail for their clients. Our experience with the USPS was excellent. While there were occasional problems, the service provided was by far as good as any we get from any government agency. Recently, the VCH email chat group has been aflame with unhappy folks dealing with a rash of issues. Below, The USPS responds to our outreach.

While some of those issues were not related to the USPS (theft and vandalism) many of the complaints surrounded poor service, misdelivered mail and a general lack of give-a-darn from the postal employees.

Teller Contacts USPS Management

Drawing from our past experience with the USPS, The Teller reached out to The United States Postal Service directly. I spoke to a couple of folks and ultimately talked to David Rupert who manages a large swath of the west including Nevada. We copied all the recent email threads and sent them to Mr. Rupert who in turn had a confab with the Reno Postmaster and the folks in Steamboat.

Here is his response:

Mr. Toll,

Thank you for reaching out to us to make us aware of some delivery inaccuracies during recent months. We had an emergency replacement on the route and the similarity in address numbers and names along with a lack of familiarity led to delivery errors which have since been rectified. We are working on some solutions to prevent a reoccurrence and deeply apologize for the inconvenience we caused our customers.

We also understand the sense of frustration when trying to relay these issues to local management. Our central phone number, 1800-ASK-USPS is great first step since it documents the issue and sends it directly to local managers for next-day resolution. We have very few complaints about these delivery issues registered through this system, so we are unable to assess the full breadth of the issue. However, we still take the issues seriously and will vigorously work to continue our customer’s trust.

We invite any concerned party to call the station manager, Sean Bardin, who oversees the Steamboat Station with any concerns and he’ll be happy to pursue them until resolved. We are also trying to reach out to some of the customers in this thread to help them individually.

David Rupert

Postal Spokesman for Nevada

As you can read from his reply, residents of the Highlands are encouraged to follow procedure and put a call into the 800 number. Additionally, the Steamboat Station Manager, Sean Bardin, is responsible for serving the Highlands and is accessible.

The problems with stolen mail will continue to be an issue, but qualified personnel are back on the job and it looks like this recent rash of issues will be in the rearview mirror.

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3 comments

Thank you for reaching out to them. The reply is quite interesting. Note the statement there was an emergency replacement or “scapegoat” he refers to. That was a recent event after the regular assigned delivery person rolled the delivery vehicle at the bottom of Geiger Grade. The majority of the issued occurred before that event took place. It was nice to offer up Sean Bardin as a point of contact for these issues, but somehow the nice man forgot to offer up Mr. Bardin’s phone number for this contact, and instead only provided the toll free customer-no-service number. Perhaps a response to his reply to you is warranted.

This is spot on. These issues have been going on for quite a while. I have had to stop getting packages VIA USPS delivered to my home address due to issues with failed or incorrect deliveries. When my concerns are brought to the management over th e last 4 years to the Steamboat station, there is little help. I have had one package out of five recovered by them from mis-deliveries. My recommendation is avoid USPS whenever possible.

Thanks Sam! I have tried to Deal with the station manager. I have been met with “well we will look into the problem” and that is the end of the road. I have never been met with understanding or the feeling that he gave a damn. Looks like you got at least some response. Must be the hair!